Hiya #FridayFlash folks!
It’s been a while (I think I said that last time) but at least I’m here.
This one’s a bit different for me, I think I was channeling Kurt Vonagut in parts, but I think it’s alright for the most part.
If you remember Brad and Joe, I think they might make an appearance here in the near future and it looks to have a word count in excess of 5k. I know, I know, a bit long for those two but I think it’ll do.
Anyway, here’s my #FridayFlash of the week, “Against The Odds.”
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AGAINST THE ODDS
Will Morton had three distinct visions of his own death before breakfast. In the first, he lost his footing at the top step of the stairs and tumbled to his death. In the second, he nicked his jugular vein after fumbling with a large knife, then collapsed on his kitchen floor and bled to death. Then third was fairly straight forward: he choked (chokes) on one of the sausages he had (will) cooked (cook) for breakfast. Distractedly, he thought about how difficult conjugation was when it came to predictions, but turned his thoughts back to the visions. “Been a while since I had any of those,” he said to no one. “I guess I was due.”
Before this strange gift became manifest, he used to think that the onset of things like this were the result of some traumatic accident or freak occurrence. He was somewhat familiar with the origin stories of comic book superheroes and they usually started with a scene of picturesque normalness. A few pages into any one of these stories might show a frame with electrified letters spelling “UNTIL…” This was not his experience and came to loathe comic book writers for spreading such lies.
Will’s “origin story” (as much as he hated the corny overtones, he had no better way to describe it) was slow and gradual. It started with the existential pondering of his own mortality that any person might think about from time to time. He thought about how fleeting life was and how he might die at any moment for any reason. He thought about getting electrocuted the next time he plugged something into a socket. He thought about getting hit by a car the next time he crossed the street. He thought about the outside chance of being murdered by some psychopath for no reason at all and he thought about a thousand other ways to die. He realized that in most of these visions, he never saw his own end coming at all. This made him think harder. And through this mental wind storm of swirling ideas that grew more ominous and detailed the longer he let them run wild, something that probably wasn’t supposed to happen, happened. He started seeing, not merely imagining, his death in a very real and vivid way.
At first, he thought he needed a drink. Then he started seeing himself very drunk, passing out on his back, vomiting and choking to death. He nixed the idea and thought that a shower might calm him down. Then he saw himself slipping on the soap, banging his head on the faucet and then either bleeding to death or drowning to death. In desperation, he thought of visiting his sister miles away and alternately saw himself hitting a tree and dying, getting hit by runaway semi and dying, and driving off a bridge into a large river and dying. The more he thought about what to do, the more numerous his deaths became and he swiftly lost his mind.
He admitted himself to Holly Oaks Psychiatric Hospital and was treated for paranoid schizophrenia. His psychiatrists did what they could, trying to convince him that he was imagining it all while not really taking anything he said very seriously. Will knew better, of course. He wasn’t imagining it, we was seeing it. Everything from the hallway floor that was waxed to a homicidal slickness to the careless twenty-something intern that almost gave him an overdose on a daily basis. Every day he saw his death a million times and experienced the cold hand of death nearly upon him every waking minute.
On his three week anniversary at Holly Oaks, he met Dr. Omler and everything changed. He listened to Will and, unlike every other doctor he had talked to, actually believed him.
“Wow,” Dr. Omler said after hearing Will wax hysteric about his visions for nearly fifteen minutes without interruption. “That must really suck.”
“You’re just humoring me,” Will said, as a vision of the light fixture above him falling and killing him filled his head. “You don’t know what it’s like…”
“No, no,” Omler said, then said, “Well, yeah, I don’t know what that’s like, but I can imagine. You know, it may not be that crazy. How much do you know about quantum physics?”
Omler described a theory which tried to explain how scientists can’t say for certain what is going on at a subatomic level. There was a theory, Omler explained, that claimed that we can’t know what’s going on at a subatomic level because everything, all possible outcomes (and possibly a few that are impossible), are going on at the same time. “…in parallel dimensions, of course.”
“Of…course,” Will said, wondering just who was the crazy person in the room. “Are you saying that I’m…wait, what are you saying?”
“I’m only saying that it’s possible that you’re on to something. Perception is reality after all. Maybe what you’re seeing actually is going on, but not here—if you know what I mean. But look at it this way: you’ve seen your death, what, billions of times? And you’re not dead, no matter how many times you thought you would be. Statistically speaking, the odds of dying now are billions to one, am I right?”
That did the trick. By the end of the week, Will was out of the hospital and back to normal life. He still saw his death every now and then, but he had statistics on his side. He had avoided falling down his stairs, slitting his own throat and now settled down to breakfast. But that still left the sausage…
I am going to die one day, he thought. Eventually statistics will catch up. Eventually I’m going to see my death and it will happen. What’s the point? What is there to look forward to?
He thought and said aloud, “Well…this breakfast for one thing.” He popped the sausage into his mouth and smiled.



Hi ya #FridayFlash crew!
No #FridayFlash this week, just a reasonably good reason why and maybe—just maybe—something to think about.
It occurred to me a while back that I’ve never seen Brad & Joe actually drunk and behaving badly. Here they are at their worst. I had a lot of fun with this one.
Our moon does several important things for us. The most notable effect are the tides which are affected by moon’s gravitational pull. The moon also anchors Earth’s axial tilt at a more or less steady 23.44 degrees. It has been theorized that the Moon’s presence has slowed the rotation of the Earth from a rather rushed and hectic 8 hour day to a much more laid back and easy-to-get-along-with 24 hour day.
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